T.B. Boyd to speak at MLK Jr. Day service

By Janel Shoun-Smith | Jan 7, 2014

T.B. Boyd, III, president and CEO of R.H. Boyd Publishing, a leading producer of literature and church supplies for more than 100 years, will speak at Lipscomb University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day chapel service at 10:55 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 21 in Allen Arena.

Boyd was elected president and CEO of R.H. Boyd Publishing (then called the National Baptist Publishing Board) in 1979, following a long family tradition that began with founder Richard Henry Boyd, a former slave who became a preacher after emancipation and saw a need to include the African American experience within the available religious literature of the day. More than 100 years later. R.H. Boyd Publishing produces millions of periodicals distributed to churches, individuals and book stores throughout the United States and the world.

Boyd is the fourth president of the family-run business. He began working in the company’s bindery and mailing rooms as a high school student and became a full-time employee in 1969 after graduation from Tennessee State University. He worked his way up, coordinating the construction of a new corporate headquarters; becoming a member of the board of directors in 1976, and compiling and introducing a new hymnal – the National Baptist Hymnal – which became one of the best-selling books in America.

Boyd has a Doctor of Divinity and a Doctor of Letters from Shreveport Bible College. He is a member of the Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church.

Elsewhere in Nashville, he has served on the boards for the Citizens Bank and Trust Company, First Union Bank; as the chairman of the United Negro College Fund Telethon; as the vice chairman of the Meharry Medical College board of trustees; and as the inaugural president of the 100 Black Men of Middle Tennessee.